The people of Iraq could not keep waiting

The niceties of international law seem ill-suited to dealing with the likes of Saddam Hussein, writes Tony Parkinson.

Throughout the Iraq debate, Labor's foreign affairs spokesman, Kevin Rudd, has argued as cogently and persuasively as anyone about the importance of upholding the high principles of the United Nations Charter.

Yet, inevitably, the question arises: short of an explicit UN Security Council authority for war in Iraq, what exactly were the alternatives? In practice, there was only one - to leave Saddam's regime in power, and muddle through with the discredited 12-year policy of containment.

As Rudd was reminded during a key foreign policy presentation in Melbourne this week, the niceties of international law can seem particularly ill-suited to dealing with the likes of Saddam - especially if you look at the dilemma from the perspective of the long-suffering Iraqi people.

In delivering the annual Castan Lecture at Monash University, Rudd gave an impressive analysis of the failings of diplomacy in Iraq, and insisted that Labor had the weight of international legal opinion behind it when it argued the "coalition of the willing" failed to demonstrate sufficient cause for war.

But no sooner had Rudd folded his speech notes than he was to be confronted very directly by the real-world ramifications of his logic.

When it came to questions from the floor, the first to speak up was Riadh al-Mahaidi, a senior lecturer in civil engineering at Monash.

Dr Mahaidi also happens to be an Iraqi exile. Last month, he returned to Baghdad for the first time in 12 years. He wanted to offer Rudd a few first-hand observations on how the Iraqi people were faring under the new order. It was not the usual bleak narrative.

"There was a lot of destruction," he said. "But I would also say there was a lot of happiness about freedom. A lot of people there have never imagined that one day they would wake up and have freedom.

"I went back to Baghdad University, my former place of work, and there were many lively student debates.

"They all want to see the coalition forces leave the country as soon as the job is done, that's for sure. But people in Iraq believe there was no other way for them to be liberated except by this intervention."

Rudd conceded readily that Saddam's regime was monstrous, and acknowledged the urgent need to clarify and perhaps codify the doctrine of international humanitarian intervention. He suggested, as a starting point, the report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, co-chaired by an old Labor colleague, Gareth Evans.

But Dr Mahaidi said that these lofty debates about international rule making remained largely irrelevant to the Iraqi people: "I don't think they could have waited for the UN to be reformed, or the UN Charter to be changed."

Later, Dr Mahaidi elaborated: "Mr Rudd is right in terms of trying to preserve some sort of international legitimacy for the UN. But you must see this from the perspective of the oppressed. It is not as if the Iraqis had not tried to do it themselves. We had the uprisings in 1991.

"But the brutality of the regime made it impossible, and Iraqis came to the conclusion that only an outside power could free them."

Dr Mahaidi's opinion may be one among many. But he speaks as a moderate from Iraq's Shiite tradition - a silent majority if ever there was one, having been chained, gagged and tormented for 30 years by Saddam's thugs.

His younger brother, Ali, was executed at the age of 22, having been jailed by the state for refusing to join the Baath Party. In the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, Dr Mahaidi fled Iraq, spending a year in refugee camps in Iran with his wife and children before gaining asylum in Australia.

Ever since, he has felt constrained from having his say - fearing the repercussions for his family back in Iraq. Now, at last, he feels free to speak.

For too long, the world has pretended to know what is best for the Iraqi people. Finally, tentatively, we are starting to hear the authentic voice of the Iraqis themselves. The rest of the world should listen.